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Bart the General

episode of The Simpsons (S1 E5)

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General referenceInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionDec 20, 2025
Entity authorityQ790830
Source-derived summary

"Bart the General" is the fifth episode of the American animated television series The Simpsons. It originally aired on Fox in the United States on February 4, 1990. In the episode, Bart Simpson enlists Grampa's help to battle local bully Nelson Muntz. Bart unites the neighborhood children against Nelson and defeats him. The episode was directed by David Silverman and was the first to be written by John Swartzwelder.

Plot

Bart gets into a fight with Nelson Muntz, the school bully, after Nelson's friends stomp on a box of cupcakes that Lisa baked for Miss Hoover's birthday party. Nelson beats up Bart after school and warns him to expect the same pummeling the next day. Marge encourages Bart to reason with Nelson, but Homer urges him to bend the rules and fight dirty. Bart follows Homer's advice but gets beaten up again. He turns to the toughest member of the Simpson family, Grampa, who introduces him to Herman, the crazed one-armed proprietor of an army surplus store called Herman's Military Antiques.

Editorial summary

“Bart the General” enters the record as episode of The Simpsons (S1 E5). Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Bart, General and episode can confirm, complicate or overturn.

Editorial reviewA dependable orientation record for establishing vocabulary, names and a first evidence trail. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1990—that can be checked directly. The linked authority record independently contributes the date 1990-02-04. Its strongest next move is a source search built around Bart, General and episode.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

“Bart the General” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Bart, General and episode provides the most credible route into that argument.

Evidence profile

Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Dec 20, 2025. The linked authority identifier is Q790830. None of the 1 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1990.

Critical limits

A concise general-reference account can conceal disagreements about scope, terminology or the weight assigned to individual sources. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Use the entry as an orientation point, then follow its citations and revision history. Names, dates and institutional relationships should be checked against the original record.

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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from Bart the General” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.